Compromise on German Indemnification Bill Expected Thursday

July 21, 1953

BONN (Jul. 20)

Frantic efforts are being made here to insure last-minute Parliamentary adoption of the bill to indemnify individual victims of the Nazis, many of whom are Jews, which ran into a serious snag Friday when the Upper House of the German Parliament recommended certain changes which the Lower House is unlikely to accept.

The Lower House is scheduled to hold one more session July 29, while the Upper House is to meet two days later. Unless the measure receives a majority in both Houses it will have failed of passage, because Parliament will be dissolved at the end of the month.

The new Parliament will be elected September 6, but it is feared that this time more Nazi-minded deputies, hostile to the idea of indemnification for Nazi victims, will be elected. In any case, the new Parliament could not consider the bill before next year.

Next Thursday a conference committee of both Houses will meet to attempt to reach a compromise on the measure. It is expected that some compromise will be reached along the lines suggested by Hamburg, that the present bill’s formula for sharing the costs of the indemnification legislation, throwing most of the cost to the states, will be kept for now and that it be modified before March 31, 1955.

This is expected to win approval in the Lower House and possibly force favorable action in the Upper House which will not want to be burdened with responsibility for scuttling a bill which Germany has repeatedly pledged to enact.